A bipartisan group of Senate lawmakers are setting the stage for a domestic and international crackdown on a Palestinian Authority policy that pays the families of terrorists.
“If you’re a young Palestinian, the best thing maybe you can do for your family in terms of income streams is become a terrorist,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told reporters Thursday. “That’s sick. That’s inconsistent with peace.”
Graham authored legislation to force an end to the so-called “pay-to-slay” program by cutting U.S. subsidies to the Palestinian Authority; the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the proposal Thursday. Concurrently, a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by the committee leaders asked U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley to push other countries to follow their lead.
“The core problem is that these payments, codified in Palestinian law, only go to prisoners and increase based on the length of the prisoner’s sentence, thus incentivizing and rewarding greater acts of terrorism,” Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Maryland Democrat Ben Cardin wrote to Haley in a letter Thursday. “We are hopeful that your efforts to use diplomatic leverage on the international stage will complement action in Congress.”
The effort to cut the roughly $300 million in foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority has been brewing for months. Graham’s legislation is named in honor of Taylor Force, a former Army officer and graduate student who was murdered in Israel and whose killer was celebrated by Palestinian leaders.
“Not one of the communications or expressions of sympathy that we received over the last year have the label of Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, independent,” Stuart Force, the father of Taylor Force, said during a news conference with lawmakers at the Capitol in February. “This is not a partisan issue. This is the right thing to do.”
Some retired Israeli military leaders worried that Graham’s original draft of the legislation could exacerbate the threat of terrorism by undermining efforts to stabilize the Palestinian economic and civil society. But Graham and Foreign Relations Committee negotiators crafted carve-outs for certain programs that most benefit the Palestinian people, while still cutting “direct” funding for the PA.
“We exempt a hospital from this conflict, because what good is there in punishing women and children for something they did not do,” Graham said.
